We live in a world where it is becoming increasingly apparent that cooperation among diverse groups and organizations is essential to the successful and healthy human future. The Shared Purpose project is emerging as a framework for convening a large number of separate and independent organizations that share some common objectives, and want to collaborate with others.

The project provides ways that participating groups can convene an alliance or coalition of other groups, developing precise ways to establish the points of agreement on which the alliance is founded. The power of our approach is based on several critical points:

• The fundamentals of the system are defined on the Internet, in terms of "fast click" check-box options, which make the system convenient.
• We recognize that groups participating in an alliance or coalition should not and cannot be required to agree on every point. Our design supports "diversity", in that we can bring together groups who may differ widely on some points, but come together in strong agreement on others.
• We encourage the emergence of "resonance" and sensitive communications between participants, and offer an agreement process which encourages careful listening and co-creativity.

The project can support the development of many related alliances or coalitions, and any participating group can become a convener of individuals and/or organizations. There is no top-level "umbrella group" that contains (and in some way may dominate) all others. Each participating group and organization freely selects its own standards and purposes.

There are currently 10 groups participating in this emerging and experimental project. You can navigate between these groups by selecting from this drop-down menu, which also appears at the bottom of every page.

A coalition is association of individuals and groups that generally share a set of common values and objectives.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition

"A coalition is an alliance among individuals or groups, through which they cooperate in joint action, each in their own self-interest, joining forces together for a common cause. This alliance may be temporary or a matter of convenience."

• Members must frame the issue that brings them together with a common interest.
• Members trust in each other and believe that their peers have a credible commitment to the common issue(s) and/or goal(s).
• The coalition must have a mechanism(s) to manage differences in language, orientation, tactics, culture, ideology, etc. between and among the collective’s members (especially in transnational coalitions).
• The shared incentive to participate and, consequently, benefit.

• We have developed a large list of overlapping and related purposes, which have been offered by participating organizations as a statement of their mission and objectives.
• Organizations are invited to define themselves in terms of purposes listed by other organizations, by a "fast click" process of checking off purposes submitted by others. This creates an "instant electronic coalition" connecting organizations sharing the same purpose.
• Unaffiliated individual members can also select purposes they support or share, which connects individual sharing those purposes, and supports organizations selecting these purposes.
• For visual simplicity, the project is organized in terms of the "Wheel of Co-Creation", which describes society as a "whole system" in terms of 12 major sectors. Organizations and purposes are categorized by their appropriate sectors within the wheel. Organizations and purposes can be in more than one sector.
• Within the range of our themes and objectives, there can be any number of coalitions that pull groups and organizations together, for any reasons they find interesting. Our approach makes it a simple thing to build "coalitions of coalitions" with little more than a check-box and a click.

Created by the Foundation for Conscious Evolution